Lead Me Home: A Fight for Me Stand-Alone Novel

by A. L. Jackson

  Not tonight.

  Not when I wanted to turn around, go to Ollie, and tell him I wasn’t going anywhere.

  Promise him I’d stay.

  Matt edged forward again. This time, he placed both his hands to my hips in a bid to bring us closer.

  I set my hands on his chest, intending to tell him I was sorry but I couldn’t do this. Even if it was just a dance, it felt wrong.

  But my mouth went dry, and my tongue got stuck on the roof of my mouth when I felt the energy surge over me from behind. At the same time, the waters parting as the air rushed and whirled.

  I didn’t even have time to process it before Ollie was there.

  Towering next to where Matt attempted to bring us together.

  The man so big.

  Savage and fierce.

  Hands fisted at his sides and something like anger in his expression.

  There was no chance I could breathe through the impact.

  He turned all that intimidation on Matt. “Sorry, brother, but I’m gonna have to cut in.”

  His tone was a low threat.

  Irritated, Matt’s attention flicked to Ollie.

  For a second, I thought he was going to refuse. Maybe he hadn’t known who it was before he’d looked, or maybe it hadn’t been until then that he’d caught on to the possessive indignation that radiated from Ollie’s flesh.

  But Matt jolted and started to slowly back away. Eyes darting between us for a beat, annoyed and off-put before he seemed to give and disappeared into the fray.

  Then Ollie looped a massive arm around my waist as he wound the other hand into my hair.

  A gasp burst from my lungs.

  Never, ever had Ollie touched me in public. Not like this.

  He pulled me flush against his heat and strength and battering heart.

  His forehead dropped to mine, and our bodies began to sway, to move in time to the beat, our hips rocking as we fell into the dance.

  People throbbed around us, and he held me tighter. He bent down, wedging his knee between my thighs.

  One hand gripped me by the waist, that thumb running dizzying circles on my hipbone.

  “Nikki,” he murmured. My name sounded fragile and unsure where he released it an inch from my mouth. “I’m going to lose my mind, looking at you on this floor, another man touching you.”

  My hands fisted in his shirt, desperate to get him closer.

  “Ollie,” I whispered, close to begging.

  What is this?

  I can’t handle being this close to you, and you push me away again.

  His nose brushed mine, and his expression verged on pained as he drew in a ragged breath.

  Trembling with need.

  We rocked in hesitation, and his mouth was in my hair, at my temple, running tenderly down my cheek.

  Fire on my skin.

  Then he brushed his lips across mine.

  Once.

  Twice.

  So sweet.

  Lightheadedness swept through me like a slow dream.

  Then he crushed his mouth to mine.

  Indecision erased. The man consuming me in a way he’d never done.

  Openly.

  It felt like a claiming.

  His hand moved to the back of my head as he angled me just right. His tongue demanding all of me right out in the middle of the dance floor.

  My heart took off at a sprint, racing for his that hammered in the air.

  And we spun.

  Kissing.

  Kissing and kissing and kissing.

  Desire flashed.

  Ollie groaned.

  I burned—every cell in my body coming alive under his touch.

  He suddenly pulled away, and I was blinking, trying to find my senses. But the only thing I could see was this man.

  Peering down at me, something so different in his gaze.

  Powerful and unending.

  My knees shook, and he took me by the hand, and that was when I noticed that all of our friends were frozen in the middle of the floor.

  Shocked, every single one of them stared back at us.

  Rex cracked a grin in Ollie’s direction, and Ollie just gave him a finger as he began to haul me back through the crowd.

  Heat flushed my body, my cheeks.

  Not because I was embarrassed or ashamed but because, for the first time ever, it felt like I was finally right, and I had no idea how long this feeling would remain.

  I struggled to keep up on my heels as Ollie wound through the groups packed around the high-top tables, the man on a mission as he beelined for the darkened hall.

  The second we were in it, he had me pinned, my back against the wall and my legs around his waist. He ground himself against my center.

  Pleasure sparked.

  He groaned, the man plundering my mouth as he did.

  “Nikki,” he muttered, hands running the outside of my bare thighs. “Nikki.”

  Without setting me on my feet, he jerked me from the wall, never ceasing that frenzied kiss as he carried me the rest of the way down the hall and started up the zigzagging stairwell.

  We banged up the steps, the man spinning and pressing and clamoring, his hands everywhere.

  Needy.

  As needy as his mouth that consumed mine.

  As needy as my pleas that whispered from my soul.

  My hands threaded in his hair, and my body rocked against his.

  Every brush spurred me higher.

  “Ollie. Ollie,” I whimpered, swept away in his madness. Willing to float away forever if it meant getting to be with him.

  He stumbled up the three flights of stairs. The music from downstairs became a dull, vibrating hum, our hearts becoming louder as he made it through the door to his loft.

  He didn’t stop before he pinned me to the wall right outside his bedroom door. He pulled back, his cock straining against his jeans, pressed hot against my panties.

  The man panted as he stared down at me with crazed, hungry eyes.

  I searched for air. The only thing it accomplished was inhaling him. Taking on more.

  Reaching out a trembling hand, I ran it slowly—tenderly—through the longer pieces of his hair. My head angled with the plea that cracked at the back of my throat. “I want this, Ollie. I want you. But I need to know this is what you want. I can’t allow you to trample my heart all over again. If you take me in that room, there’s no going back for me.”

  25

  Ollie

  Her words blasted through my consciousness. A reminder of all the mistakes I’d made. The continuous hurt I’d inflicted.

  Forcing myself to slow down, I spread my hand out across the side of her face. Wishing I could hold all of her.

  Wishing I could tell her I’d love her forever.

  Instead, a confession was falling from my mouth. “This date . . . it nearly ruins me every time it comes around. But this . . . this isn’t about Sydney. This is about you. This is about us. This is about finding what we lost.”

  My words grew low and fast. “You make everything feel different. Always have, Nikki. Like I’m someone else when I get near you. Like I’m someone better.”

  Those indigo eyes moved over my face. Searching and memorizing. Drinking me in. Remembering this moment for what it always should have been.

  “When I went to you last year . . . I was so fucked up. But I know now, I couldn’t go anywhere else. Because you made everything right when it was so fucking wrong.”

  “Ollie . . .”

  I pulled her from the wall, the girl still in my arms, my face buried in her hair. “I need you. I need you in a way I never thought possible,” I muttered, praying she’d get it.

  That it was different from when I went to her a year before telling her the same thing.

  This was a promise.

  This time, when I moved, it wasn’t frenzied or panicked like it’d been when I’d carried her upstairs. It was cautious and slow. Holding her the way she’d always deserved to be.
<
br />   Tenderly.

  The girl precious.

  I’d always wanted to wrap her up.

  Protect her.

  All these years, it’d made me crazy, and I’d wished for a way to scrape it from my psyche, from who I was. It’d taken until tonight to realize she’d only driven me mad because I refused to allow her where she was always meant to be.

  With me.

  Mine.

  I laid her out across my bed. Slowly, I crawled over her. Hovering. Staring down at her through the milky glow of the moon that spread over the room and set her aglow.

  Light.

  “No more, Nikki. Can’t go on pretending that I don’t want you. That I don’t need you. I want to try to be the kind of guy you deserve.”

  Grief fisted my heart.

  Thoughts of my sister running rampant.

  If I was gonna be with Nikki, it was time I ripped myself open wide. My eyes squeezed closed, and my teeth ground together as I forced out the words. “I’m so lost, and I don’t know if that vacant feeling is ever going to go away. Only thing I know is when I’m with you, it doesn’t feel so vast.”

  Hands caressed both sides of my face, and my eyes eased open to see the girl staring up at me. Her breaths short, so much evident in her adoring gaze. Words I wasn’t ready to hear. Really didn’t matter if she said them aloud, anyway, because I felt them when I dipped down and kissed her.

  Slow and tender, the softest kind of adoration on her tongue.

  Her fingertips slipped through my beard and found their way into our kiss, running over my lips. “I’m right here, Ollie. I’ve always been. Waiting for you. I can’t take it away, but we can hold each other through the middle of it.”

  I edged back, sitting up on my knees and bringing her with me. She straddled me where I knelt on the bed, this gorgeous girl wrapped around my lap.

  My dick strained, and my muscles ticked.

  I wanted to devour her.

  Inch by inch.

  I held her by the side of the neck, her pulse going wild against my palm. “Want to be right for you. Good for you.”

  The hint of a smile played across her lips. The girl so sexy.

  Olive skin and honeyed hair and freckled cheeks.

  Sunshine.

  She slipped down my body until she was resting on her knees. Our bodies swayed. A breadth apart.

  Her fingertips fluttered out, running down my shirt.

  Need raced my veins.

  She gathered the hem and began to drag it up, peeking at my face as she did. “You’ve always been right for me. You just need to accept that you are. That none of us are perfect. That the world is cruel, but it’s also given us the greatest gift.”

  She dragged the shirt over my head and dropped it at her side.

  A shudder ripped through me.

  Lashes of fire.

  That feeling again.

  Energy.

  “It gave us this,” she murmured so softly, hands tender as they pressed to the thunder at my chest. “Us.”

  A moan climbed my throat, and that was all I could take, and I was pulling that silky tank over her head.

  No bra.

  Those tiny tits perky. Nipples pebbled and hard.

  God. She would be my undoing.

  That moan turned to a growl, and I pushed her onto her back.

  She bounced on the bed and a giggle slipped from between her lips.

  “Beast,” she teased.

  My entire chest squeezed.

  Warmth and fire and need.

  My mouth went for the flat planes of her belly, kissing across the satiny skin, my hands winding in the hem of her skirt. “Don’t even know if I can bring myself to get you out of this skirt. Do you have any clue what you were doing to me all night? Looking like this?” I grumbled at her stomach.

  Vibrations of low laughter shook beneath my lips, and her fingers were winding into my hair. “I thought you told me the way I dressed was ridiculous.”

  “It is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous how hard it makes me. Ridiculous how much it makes me want you. Ridiculous how much time I’ve spent fantasizing about peeling you out of those clothes.”

  Her laughter turned into a needy gasp as I started dragging off her skirt. I took her underwear with it.

  Sliding the fabric down those long, slender legs until every inch of her was laid bare.

  “Shit . . . ridiculous,” I hissed, letting a smirk climb to my mouth. “Ridiculous how gorgeous you are.”

  She trembled, and her hips arched just from the heat of my stare. “Ollie, I need you.”

  And I knew . . . I knew that I needed her more than she could ever need me, and that was kind of fucked up, but I couldn’t go on for one more second without her.

  She was everything. Everything.

  “So gorgeous,” I told her, the tip of my index finger running the center of her chest, riding down, across her trembling belly.

  I eased off the bed, standing beside it, watching her in the night as I shrugged out of my boots and jeans and underwear.

  Her lips parted and her gaze swept over me. Want darkened those indigo eyes.

  Lust and desire and something that was so much bigger than that.

  “You are what’s beautiful, Ollie. So beautiful. All these years, it’s been hard to look at you because I missed you so much.”

  Sadness tinted the words, and I knew it came from that hurt I’d inflicted. Years of rejecting us both.

  I reached in the drawer, quick to cover my cock, which was pointing for the sky, begging for her, before I was crawling back over her, between her thighs.

  Desire brimmed and boiled, threatening to blow.

  I cradled one side of her face in my hand.

  “Sunshine,” I whispered.

  Emotion thick, her face pinched, and her chest heaved with each shallow breath.

  I wanted to swallow every single one of them down. Keep them tucked away as a reminder of the way I felt at this moment. So I’d never forget.

  “Are you mine, Ollie?” whispered from her swollen, damp lips.

  My mouth brushed hers, tasting the words. “I’ve always been.”

  “Then take me.” She wound her arms around my neck. “Keep me.”

  A thunder lit up my heart, pulse raging as it careened through my veins, our bodies catching as I nestled deeper between her thighs.

  Her pussy slick and wet, my cock hard and ready.

  That beast she was always all too pleased to remind me I was wanted to devour her. Take her fast and wild and hard.

  There’d be plenty of time for that later.

  Tonight, I wrapped her up and nuzzled my face in her hair. My murmur climbed into the dense air. “You owned me from the first day that I met you.”

  She hooked her arm around my head, her perfect tits pressed to my chest, her body arching, begging for mine. “I had no idea that day that you’d become the focus of my life. The one I longed for. My whole life, all it took was a glance from you, and I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be.”

  Emotion clutched and clenched. I eased back a fraction, rubbing against the slick heat that burned between her thighs.

  The tip of my cock caught.

  Our breaths hitched, and our gazes tangled.

  For the flash of a second, it was like I felt everything snapping into place.

  Worlds aligning and spirits syncing.

  Us.

  She was right.

  Exactly the way it was supposed to be.

  She stared at me through the shadows, her lips parting as I pressed just the tip of my dick in to the silky welcome of her body.

  “Tell me this is what you want,” I grunted, holding back.

  “I want you more than you could ever know.” Her words struck me like arrows, and that was all I needed.

  I nudged deeper into her warmth.

  The girl so damned tiny that she was gasping and my jaw was clenching as I slowly spread her.

  Felt so much like t
he first time I’d taken her, when she’d cried out from the pain and begged me for more, and I’d held her and whispered that I’d love her forever.

  Didn’t matter that I’d only been a kid. Seventeen. I knew I’d never be given a greater gift than that.

  And somehow, this felt just as big.

  Because the girl?

  The girl was giving her trust.

  Even when I knew I didn’t deserve it. That I hadn’t earned it. But fuck . . . I was gonna try.

  “Shit, Nikki,” I wheezed as I took her by the caps of her delicate shoulders, trying to hold myself in check when this girl had always made me lose all control.

  She panted, her legs dropping wide, jagged gasps from her mouth as she adjusted to me again. Nails sank into my shoulders, and we both held tight until I fully buried myself in her body.

  Nothing had ever felt so right.

  “Are you okay?” I managed, propping myself up on an elbow so I could look down at her.

  Need prowled my spine, begging me to move.

  To take her right.

  Those eyes met mine, so intense, that feeling gripping, sinking all the way inside.

  She looked up at me like maybe I might be her sun, the way she was mine, her voice scratchy when she said, “You always take my breath away.”

  My forehead dropped to hers. “Fuck . . . Nikki . . . Sunshine.”

  She splayed her hands out wide across my back, and I was gathering her in my arms, getting her as close as I could get her. I began to move, measured rocks of my hips as I took her.

  Stroke after stroke.

  Friction and gravity.

  Her whimpers struck the air, and I held her, took her slow and deep while I kissed her like the treasure she was.

  While I cherished and adored.

  Because Rex was right.

  We never knew how many days we’d be given, and I’d already wasted too many.

  Her breaths came harder. “Please.” It was a prayer from her mouth.

  I shifted back to kneeling, taking her with me, and the girl began to ride me like that was what she’d been made to do.

  Motherfucker, if it wasn’t the most magical thing.

  Her body stretched out like a sensuous band, head tipped back, her tits in my face.

  Desperate hands yanked at my hair. I licked at one of those dark nipples, swirling it with my tongue and sucking it into my mouth.